


The Wolves at the Head of the Holler

by Thelastab



Category: Green Creek Series - T.J. Klune
Genre: F/F, Genderbend, Genderswap, Sapphic jox
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:13:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21698302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thelastab/pseuds/Thelastab
Summary: Ox was twelve when she met the girl at the head of the holler, the girl who talked and talked and talked. She found out later that Josey hadn’t spoken in almost two years before she met Ox. She was thirteen was she found out the Bennetts’ secret. She was nineteen when murder came to town and tore a hole in her heart. The girl chased after the monster with revenge in her blood red eyes, leaving Ox behind to pick up the pieces. It’s been three years since that fateful day―and Josey is back. Except now she’s a woman, and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.Just a sapphic Appalachian Wolfsong AU because I'm gay and homesick.
Relationships: Joe Bennett/Ox Matheson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

I was twelve when my father put a suitcase by the door.

I asked him what he was doing, and he told me he knew I wasn’t the smartest kid. That was true. I figured I knew by now that he wasn’t the best dad, but I was smart enough not to say that. All I said was, “Yes, sir.”

He looked at me with a mix of emotions on his face. Regret, pity, exhaustion. Maybe love. “Dumb as an ox,” he said, and it didn’t sound mean coming from him. It just was.

He told me that I was gonna get shit, that people wouldn’t understand me, and that he guessed I’d have to be the man of the house. He told me that he was leaving, and I knew he wouldn’t be back.

My father had been gone for two months when the bills began to pile up. I called Gordo, my father’s old boss, who had known me most of my life. I had been hanging around his car repair shop since I was little, watching the mechanics do repairs and fetching tools for them. It had been Gordo who had convinced my dad to let me cut my hair short like a boy. He’d always looked out for me. 

I took a deep breath and dialed the shop’s number. Gordo picked up. His tone was gruff but I heard the fondness in it. “Oxnard Matheson! The fuck do you want?”

I smiled. I didn’t like talking, and over the phone was no different. I took another deep breath and decided to stall. “It’s good to hear from you.”

“Yeah, yeah. You too kid.” Gordo paused. “Your ma doing okay?”

I hesitated. “Yeah.”

“Ox.”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Kid,” he said, in his warning tone. It was enough to make me smile. Gordo had called me “little miss” and “ma’am” until I had shyly told him I didn’t like that. So now he called me “little sir” and “kid” and “kiddo,” which I liked. It always surprised me that he remembered.

So I told Gordo that we weren’t doing okay. He asked if it was because of bills and I said yes. He was quiet for awhile, and then said he was mad that my father had left us in debt. Then he asked if I would like to work for him. I told him I would.

“Okay,” he said. “Well then that’s that. Don’t worry about those bills anymore, I’ll take care of it.”

Gordo was a good man.

I helped out at Gordo’s for six months before he told us that I’d paid off the debt. I continued to work for him after that, putting the money in savings. He and the guys in the shop treated me like their own kid, made me feel welcome. On days mom had off, we would invite them over for dinner and it made me not miss my dad so much.

* * *

I turned thirteen that winter. Gordo made sure I had my birthday off, so I went to the diner after school. Mom would be off in a couple hours and it was snowing. I plopped down in a booth in my mom’s section. The other waitress, Jenny, smiled at me.

“Cold out, huh?” she said.

I smiled and shrugged.

Jenny reached out and ruffled my curls. “I’ll let your ma know you’re here.”

She left and then my mom came over. “Happy birthday, Ox!”

I smiled up at her and she kissed the top of my head, which she couldn’t do often. I had always been tall, but I had shot up this past year and was now almost four inches taller than she was. “Can I have a burger and some fries, please?”

Mom ruffled my hair. “You got it, birthday girl. Kid,” she corrected herself. I smiled. She wasn’t perfect at not calling me a girl, but she tried real hard.

The bell rang overheard and a man walked it. He seemed a little familiar and looked around Gordo’s age. He had light hair and was tall and muscled. The man closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, letting the breath out slowly. He walked over and sat down in the booth across from mine. I met his eyes and he smiled at me. I smiled back. Mom handed him a menu and told him she’d be back.

The man sniffed the air again as she left, and looked back at me. I copied him, but I didn’t smell anything different.

The man laughed and shook his head. “It’s nothing bad,” he said. I smiled and shrugged, embarrassed. “I’m Mark,” he added.

“Ox,” I said. 

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Strong name,” he said.

I just shrugged and smiled.

He smiled back and looked out the window at the snow for a moment. “I like it here.” He’d been speaking with a Northern accent before, but now it was starting to fade. He watched the snow again for a little while before saying, “I used to live around here.”

“Where?” I asked.

“At the head of the holler off McCarthy.”

“That’s where I live,” I beamed. My house was near the mouth of that holler, but there weren’t any other houses there so we were the closest.

Jenny came and took his order and we talked until she came back with his soup. When she was finished, he put a folded bill on the table and said, “My family and I will see you soon, Ox. I think it’s almost time we came home.”

“Can we-” I stopped myself.

“What, Ox?” He looked curious.

I looked down at my hands. “Can we be friends when you come home?” I didn’t have many friends. I wasn’t good at school and I was too big and boyish to be a girl like the other kids wanted me to be. I just had the shop guys, Gordo, and my ma.

“Yeah,” Mark said. “I think we’ll be friends.”

* * *

“Here,” Gordo said the next day. I guessed it was a belated birthday present, even though the box wasn’t wrapped. The other shop employees were there and they stood around to watch me open the box. They were all grinning at me, waiting. Rico and Tanner and Chris. 

When I didn’t open it fast enough, Gordo rolled his eyes. “Just open the damn thing already.” He leaned back in his chair. The tattoos on his arms seemed brighter than usual, like they had been touched up recently.

I opened the box and sucked in a breath as tears pricked my eyes. It was a work shirt with my name sewn onto it. _Ox._ All I could do was stare.

Rico touched my shoulder. Tanner rubbed a hand over my head. Chris touched his work boot to mine. I felt like I had found my place in the world, like my family had expanded to include them too. For the first time, I felt like I had brothers.

Gordo put his forehead to mine and said, “You belong to us now.” 

It was all I had ever wanted.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Didn’t I tell you?” Mark said quietly. “Ox is different.”
> 
> Ox meets the Bennetts.

Mark’s family came home that summer. I’d been walking up the holler when I heard a kids voice.

“Hey! Hey, there! You!”

I looked up. A little girl was standing in the dirt road, looking at me with wide blue eyes. Her nose was twitching and it was so surreal that I wondered if I was dreaming. “Hello,” I said.

“Who are you?” the girl asked. She had sun-bleached hair and a Northern accent.

“I’m Ox.”

“Ox! Do you smell that?”

I sniffed the air. I didn’t smell anything but the woods, so I shrugged. “The trees?”

She shook her head. “No, no, no! It’s something bigger!”

She walked toward me, nose still twitching. Her eyes went wide, and then she was running. The girl wasn’t big, maybe nine or ten years old and skinny like a green bean, but she collided with my legs so hard I had to take a step back. She started climbing me, hooking her arms around my waist and pulling herself up until her arms were around my neck and we were face to face. “It’s you!”

I didn’t know many kids and her behavior seemed strange, but maybe this was a normal thing kids did. I felt like I hadn’t been a kid in a long time. “What’s me?”

She was in my arms now. Even though I was strong enough to carry her after working in the shop, I was worried she would fall. This kid was full of restless energy. She took my face in her hands and squished my cheeks together. “Why do you smell like that?” she demanded. “Where do you come from, are you from the woods? What are you?”

She put her forehead against mine and inhaled deeply. She paused, searching my face for answers before continuing her chatter. I didn’t like to talk much, so I was happy to let her. “I don’t get it! What _is_ it?”

She wriggled out of my arms and onto my back, with her arms around my neck and chin hooked on my shoulder. The girl’s instant trust and comfort with me made me smile.

“We gotta go see my mom and dad. They’ll know what this is, they know _everything._ ” The little girl was a tornado of fingers and feet and words and I was caught in her storm. 

She dug one hand into the longer part of my hair on the top of my head, and rubbed the buzzed part on the sides. She directed me to go all the way to the head of the holler where her house was and chattered about how they had just moved there from Maine and she missed her friends but it would be okay because her uncle said she’d make new ones. She was ten and hoped she would get as tall as me when she grew up. Her name was Josey and she had two older brothers and did I have any brothers? I shook my head, and she said I was lucky because they were annoying.

We passed my trailer and I shifted so Josey could get a better look at it. 

“Do you get your own room?” she asked.

“Yeah. Just me and my mom.”

Josey was quiet before saying, “I’m sorry.”

I turned my head to look at her. “For?”

“For whatever made you sad.” Josey laid her head on my shoulder and hugged my neck tighter. It was so strange. It felt like she knew what I was thinking. She whispered, “Ox, Ox, Ox. Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

She leaned close to my ear and said reverently, _”We live so close to each other.”_

And we turned toward the house at the head of the holler. 

There were three cars with Maine plates and two moving trucks. Three grown ups were standing on the porch, like they’d been expecting us. Two boys came out to stand with them. One looked about my age and the other looked a year or two younger. They had light hair and eyes like their sister and wore curious expressions.

The grown ups consisted of two men and a woman. The woman held herself regally and looked tense and cautious, which I sensed was for Josey’s sake. A man with dark hair and eyes stood with his arm around her. He was tall and looked fierce, but kind. Next to them was a man I’d met at Oasis Diner in March. Mark.

I smiled at him. He grinned back and said, “Ox! It’s so good to see you again. I see you’ve made a new friend.”

Josey tapped my neck and I bent to let her off of my back. She took my hand and pulled me towards the others like I had a right to be there. Her tornado words started up again and she began to ramble excitedly to her mother about how I smelled. “Mom! You have to smell her! I was scoping out our territory and I found her in the road and at first she didn’t even see me ‘cause I’m such a good hunter and then I smelled her and she’s amazing! Mom, you gotta smell her and tell me why she smells like candy canes and pine cones and epic and awesome!”

Everyone stared at Josey, looking more surprised than I was. Mark was hiding a secret smile behind his hand.

“Is that so?” the woman said, her voice wavering. The man next to her squeezed her shoulder.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Mark said quietly. “Ox is different.”

Everyone was looking at us and I felt confused, like I was missing something. I was used to being on the outside of jokes and no one telling me things, but I hoped I hadn’t done anything wrong this time. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. “She was just there and I didn’t mean anything.” I was trying to make my accent more Northern like my mama did when Yanks came around, but I don’t think it worked much.

“You’re okay, Ox,” Mark said. He introduced his family to me. The woman and the dark-haired man were Elizabeth and Thomas Bennett, Josey’s parents and Mark’s sister in law and brother. The boys were Josey’s brothers, the older being Carter and the younger being Kelly. I said I was pleased to make their acquaintance.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?” Thomas asked. His accent wasn’t as pronounced Mark or Elizabeth’s. Josey started swinging our hands back and forth and I looked down at her. She was grinning up at me.

I desperately wanted to say yes, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know these people. It would be better not to bother them. “No thank you, sir. I can’t tonight.”

“Another night, then,” Elizabeth said warmly.

I smiled and said, “I’d like that, ma’am.”

I said my goodbyes and picked Josey up for a hug. She pressed her forehead to mine and inhaled deeply before promising to see me tomorrow.

I was grinning all the way home.


End file.
